13480
Reporter: bko
Assignee: mdoering
Type: Improvement
Summary: Encode email in a spam-safe format.
Environment: Safari 6.0.5 (OS X 10.8)
Priority: Minor
Resolution: WontFix
Status: Closed
Created: 2013-07-05 09:55:15.924
Updated: 2013-09-27 09:12:14.448
Resolved: 2013-09-26 21:44:42.124
Description: It would be nice if we can show email address of nodes contact in a spam safe format, which will help protect our contacts. Some sites they just put it in a image:
http://www.kahaku.go.jp/english/research/researcher/researcher.php?d=hosoya]]>
Author: mdoering@gbif.org
Created: 2013-07-05 14:53:08.449
Updated: 2013-07-05 14:53:08.449
Is that still an issue these days? email addresses are all over the place and unless you do sth very clever and rather complex to implement (like the images you mention) it is not safe against scraping anyway. Some javascript might also be an option if we really need this, google does it in some places. I dont think solutions that simply replace the @ or . symbols with human readble chars help at all these day. Although in 2008 it seemed to have worked pretty well: http://techblog.tilllate.com/2008/07/20/ten-methods-to-obfuscate-e-mail-addresses-compared/
Author: bko@gbif.org
Comment: I think this is of course not the top priority in the country page development but we should surely pay attention to. (sorry, I should have chosen the right priority). I googled 'protect email address spam bot' and can still find lots of posts sharing tips about it in the last few months, so I think this is still an issue these days. Given the visibility of GBIF portal when it's in production and we will expose almost many emails from IMS, I think we share some responsibilities in reducing SPAMs to our community. And instead of relying on client-end solution, it's better to control it from the source. I basically just want to log this for consideration, though.
Created: 2013-07-05 15:17:59.388
Updated: 2013-07-05 15:17:59.388
Author: mdoering@gbif.org
Comment: If you have any suggestions on how we can use images with jquery somehow always welcome. Only thing I can thnk of now is to create a java webservice that can render an image based on the contacts ID, If we pass the service the email its open for spammers already.
Created: 2013-07-05 15:37:34.342
Updated: 2013-07-05 15:37:34.342
Author: bko@gbif.org
Comment: Yes, I'll find some time to look into possible options. I always feel bad when I file an issue but I am not contributing to the solution. Perhaps we should do it on the web app level? Assuming that later we also want authentication for API users like twitter and flickr, etc.
Created: 2013-07-05 15:46:01.623
Updated: 2013-07-05 15:46:01.623
Author: omeyn@gbif.org
Comment: Don't want to be harsh, but we're going live with just text, and i think at that point the horse is out of the barn - switching to images later on won't help.
Created: 2013-09-26 21:44:42.154
Updated: 2013-09-26 21:44:42.154
Author: bko@gbif.org
Comment: That is fine. I obviously won't have time to deal with it in this period of time.
Created: 2013-09-27 09:12:14.448
Updated: 2013-09-27 09:12:14.448